The living and the dead

Last week three children drowned in the Jail Branch River in Barre while playing "army" in the woods. Even for someone who has only lived here a year it's easy to see the impact it's had on the town. Many people are stil in shock, and those who aren't carry a deep sadness around with them that you can almost see.

The tragedy has been hitting hard at my home as well. The children were older schoolmates of my two stepchildren, and they've been dealing with things in different ways. For my stepson it's been easier. He's six years old, and although he understands the concept of death and the fact that those three kids are never coming back, you can tell that there's a point where his brain simply refuses to ponder the issue anymore. He understands what happened, but he's too young for it to really hit him.

It hits my stepdaughter, who is weeks away from turning 9 and thought one of the boys was cute. She's been crying a lot, afraid to go to sleep for fear of nightmares. When my fiance and I took her for a walk along a local bike path she walked between us and held our hands when we were near the river. While her brother visited his father over the weekend she stayed home and got some extra attention from us, and I think that did her a lot of good. I know it did my fiance and I some good. Now that a few days have passed she's getting better, but I wonder how much of a reminder it will be for her to go back to school today, to see the flagpole where we and many others dropped off flowers and cards, to know that there are three kids she won't be seeing at recess.

In a TV show there would be a Lesson We All Can Learn From This, but that's not so certain in life. I think my stepson is too young for this tragedy to have much of an impact on him. My stepdaughter is old enough that this experience may hold onto her a little more tightly. If she can honestly learn something from this, if these terrible events can make one hard-to-instill idea stick in her head, I hope it is that youth is not the same as immortality. Children die. It doesn't just happen to anonymous people you hear about on the national news. It can happen to your friends, and it can happen to you. I don't want to scare her with this fact, and I don't want her to dwell on it. But if she keeps it in mind, if she has that little hard-wired understanding that there's no invisible force that will keep her from harm simply because she's young, I think that might serve her well. Maybe that will give her a little guidance in her looming headstrong teen years. I hope so. I hope it will help keep her safe, because as any parents could tell you, my fiance and I will take all the help we can get in that regard.

"All in, all in, all in a day
A day, it changes everything"

--Isis, "Weight"